kings, thieves, and exiles
by kinnoth
Summary: The night Spot Conlon took over Brooklyn was the night Racetrack turned up off the street in Manhattan (Spot/Racetrack)
1. Jack, Racetrack

additional tags and/or warnings, if you're into that sort of thing:

i hope you like politics, seriously i hope you like politics, violence murder and betrayal, these nicknames are ridiculous, casual racism by white people against other white people, protip: they weren't terribly nice to women in the 1800s, fact checked to death and still broken, speaking of broken: third person omniscience is hard, the more you know: brooklyn was its own city until 1898, this is important, "the king of new york" being an embarrassingly literal title now

* * *

**Chapter 1: Jack, Racetrack**

The night Spot Conlon took over Brooklyn was the night Racetrack turned up off the street in Manhattan. Of course, at the time, no one knew it yet. Murmurs had been circling for some time that changes were fomenting across the bridge, but they'd all been brushed off by all but the most daring speculators. Over there, Roacher Weiss was king: had been the guy in charge for so long, even Jack Kelly didn't remember otherwise, and Jack had been around _forever_. It was a fact of life, sure as shooting, safe as houses. But then Racetrack showed up.

The Manhattan newsies liked Racetrack just fine – sure he was Brooklyn, born and raised, but he never took off anyone more money than they could afford to lose, and he'd yet to show anyone the back of his hand. Sometimes, he came by with other Brooklyn guys – tough-headed thug types or weaseling cheats – but that just threw him into more contrast. Racetrack was _good_ Brooklyn, the only one: one of the guys, always handy with a full deck of cards and a good yarn, and sometimes even a bit of booze.

It was eight-thirty, going on lights out. A summer thunderstorm rumbled lazily outside, supplying dramatic emphasis to the show Dutchy and Specs were putting on, re-enacting the tale of that one time they nearly saw a girl's ankles. Boots was proctoring over a leisurely game of dominoes, and Crutchy was critiquing one of the new boys on the persuasiveness of his fake limp when they heard Kloppman's agitated mumble, rising up from down the stairs.

"Jack," said Itey, and Jack looked up from the pages of his dime-novel. Kloppman's voice was getting louder; it sounded like the old man was arguing with someone else. Jack kicked his feet off his bunk and absently shouldered one suspender over his arm.

"Hey, Mush," Jack called. Mush and Blink were sleeping closest to the stairs that night, but Blink couldn't see too good, especially after dark. "Wanna go see what's going on?"

Mush did a spritely little leap off the top bunk and over to the door without being told twice. There was a candleglow moving up the narrow staircase, and two sets of footsteps. "They're coming up," he reported. "Kloppman's talking, but whoever the heck else is there ain't saying a word."

Jack made an impatient twist with his mouth. "Yeah, Mushy, I can hear that, but what's he saying?"

Now, Kloppman was an old bat. So old, it was practically inconceivable that he'd ever been anything other than ninety-seven or however many years he actually was. He spoke with a broken, whisky slur out of one side of his mouth, like the other side had stuck sometime in the 20s and hadn't been oiled since. Mush wasn't the only newsie at the lodging house who usually just nodded along with whatever Kloppman was saying on account of being too polite to tell him he wasn't making a word of sense.

"Beats me, Jack," Mush said diplomatically, but there wasn't much time to explain, because two seconds later, the door burst in and there was Racetrack – wet to the bone, hunched into himself with his cap pulled low over his eyes, but it was definitely him.

"Ja', kait'ry' do 'ell 'im t'er 'asn'to mo' 'oom," Kloppman said with an exasperated tone of defeat.

Jack shook back his mussed hair and smiled. "That's okay, Mr Kloppman, Race is just visiting, ain't he?" The smile changed steadily to bared teeth as Kloppman retreated, grumbling curses to himself, and limping back down the stairs.

Racetrack nodded, the shallow dip of chin of the self-preserving. You didn't just show up at another city's house without invitation, even if they pretty much liked you most of the time and thought you were an okay guy. He could feel a hush spread across the room like a chill, with himself at the epicenter.

"Hey." That was Boots, fetching a towel from someone's rack and handing it to Racetrack as he walked past him to stand with the other Manhattan newsies. Racetrack took the towel with a muttered thanks. He looked to Jack for any objections, but Jack wasn't about to deny a fella a towel, even if he was being rude, so there was no protest as Race peeled the cap from his hair and dried himself off.

Jack cleared his throat. "So, Race." His voice had a deliberate nonchalance to it. "It's a bit late for a card game, don't you think?" The others chorused in agreement, though their confused quiet was taking on an edge of caution as Race wordlessly continued to squeeze water out of his narrow sleeves.

Blink was still sitting cross-legged in his bunk, Mush squeezed in next to him. The two of them were the closest to where Racetrack stood, and they were close enough to see the quavering jumpiness in the hands that rung at his vest and shirtsleeves. Blink darted a look over at Mush to see if he'd noticed it too; Mush met his gaze long enough to confirm that he had, before the both of them fixed a stare over at Jack. Jack wasn't looking over at them, though; you could see the gears grinding in his brain as he tried to work out Race. There was a tendon tightening in the line of muscle leading up to his jaw. Cowboy Jack was getting angry.

"You here for something?" Jack tried. No answer. "You got something to say? You here on business? You get lost? What?"

Still nothing.

"Hey now, look," Jack said finally. He rose to his feet, and even in his socks, he had a good six inches on Racetrack and at least thirty pounds. He stepped towards Race and the quiet in the room became silence. "Kloppman's already told you, we ain't got an empty bed for the likes of you, so if you ain't got no good reason to be here, why don't you get the hell back to Brooklyn?"

"Roacher Weiss is dead."

A buzz of thunder outside, distant, but it might as well have been right in the room with them for how airless everything suddenly was. Racetrack had looked up at all of them at last. Washed out pale from the cold and the rain, his dark eyes were like wounds in his face.

"You're shittin' me." That was Skittery.

Racetrack looked at him. "I ain't shittin' no one," he replied.

Pie Eater chimed in. "How did he die?"

Race's eyes tracked across the room. "He was killed," he responded.

"Who killed him?" And that was Jack, ten feet away, half-dressed with his arms over his chest but getting right to the point, because that was his job.

Racetrack met Jack's glare and the cold intractability of it broke his scattered stare. He blinked several times in rapid succession, and when he looked up again, his expression seemed much more present.

"We don't– it–" Race flinched, took a breath. "Spot did," he said. "Spot Conlon."

Mutters went up all around the room at that, but Racetrack kept his eyes on Jack.

"Who's Spot Conlon?" came a shout over the low din, and one by one, everyone shut up to wait for Racetrack's answer.

Race's head jerked up. "Spot? He's– I mean, he–" he sputtered. He looked to Jack, but Jack just frowned and shook his head. Race blinked back, astounded.

"Two months ago – I brought him – do you really not–?" A small ocean of blank stares. Incredulity stuttered his voice as Race prompted, "I, I brought him round. We, he's been here at least, at least three, four times. He –" Race paused and closed his eyes in one long blink to collect himself.

"Remember that kid who shows up with me, sometimes?" he said with a jerky unsteadiness. "He don't play cards, or dice, but he'd come, like, to watch, you know?" He looked up and found Boots in the crowd, who seemed to be nodding slowly, uncertainly.

"Yeah, he," Racetrack huffed like the back end of a laugh. "He don't like to talk much. He'd sit behind me – kind of small, remember?" He put a hand up around his ear. "About this tall. Blond hair, blue eyes, looks a bit like – _Jack_," he interjected urgently, rounding to face him, "he talked to you that one time, you remember, you shook his hand–"

"How old is he?" Jack interrupted, his eyes burning into Race's face for answers.

Racetrack did laugh this time, though with the lowering of his chin and the way his hand came up to cover his eyes, the wetness of it was suspicious. "Fourteen," he replied. "He's just turned fourteen."

The bewilderment of unexpected news turned to the discomfort of unpracticed sympathy as Race's shoulders began to shake. The boys looked to each other, but every face returned only clumsy helplessness at this display.

Jack stepped in, then, closed their distance with ease. He was their leader for a reason.

"Come on Race, it ain't all that bad," he said with a cheer so bright it had to be crafted. He clapped Racetrack across the shoulder with a friendly hand, then pulled at him a little bit; let him lean into the line of his body. "It's too late for you to go back to Brooklyn. I think we oughta keep you here tonight, whaddya say?"

* * *

It wasn't that Brooklyn was tougher than any other place; you'd be hard pressed to find any newsie in the state of New York who didn't have at least two or three fighting scars, broken bones, or chipped teeth trophied on their person. But while everyone knew that you weren't a real newsie till you'd scrapped your way out of a fight, Brooklyn was the only place where the way you earned your stripes was by starting fights and winning them.

By lunchtime the next day, it had become perfectly clear how Spot Conlon had not only gotten himself his stripes, but the entirety of Brooklyn City all in one sweep.

The stories varied, of course, but the basic facts emerged as this: Roacher Weiss had been pushing twenty by the time Spot had gotten to him. That wasn't exactly unheard of, but lodging houses only took kids in till their eighteenth birthday, so Roacher was getting to be less and less of a newsie and more of a grown-up doing grown-up things and running a bit of newsie stuff on the side. Problem was – and this is where the details got dicey – one of those grown-up things Roacher may or may not have been doing was mob business.

No names were getting named yet, but Crutchy heard it from a guy whose cousin knew a guy who lived up in Five Points who said that Roacher was getting jobs from the Hebrews, and some of those jobs – according to Specs who'd heard it from a guy who had a brother whose friend worked on the Fulton Ferry – Roacher was passing on to his newsies.

They pestered and pleaded and even brought him half a salt-beef sandwich as a bribe, but Racetrack refused to neither confirm nor deny nor even comment on the talk. His eyes were red and ringed all day, like he hadn't slept the night, but even when cajoled late into the evening of the next day, he kept so schtum about it, they were calling him Dumbshow Higgins, by the end, just to try and get him to say anything, just anything. Finally, on the third night, under the promise they'd shut the hell up and let him get some peace, Race revealed with great reluctance that Roacher was a lousy dirtbag and he wasn't sorry to see him gone, not one bit.

It was hardly anything, but it was something, and a newsie could take something and make it into just about anything. By the time Pie Eater burst in through the door at the end of the week, jabbering excitedly about what he'd heard from a buddy in the Bronx, the story was that Roacher was running a brothel, a dog fighting ring, and plotting the assassination of the mayor. Snoddy said he'd heard that all the boys who'd cooperated with him were paid in half-dollar coins, and all the ones who wouldn't he'd had sunk to the bottom of the pier.

Nothing emerged from the other side of the bridge, however. Not a single boy went in or out of Brooklyn, after Racetrack. Jack was keeping up with Oddball Schumann, who was said to lead the newsies in Queens, so much as the newsies in Queens were of the disposition to be led, but Oddball had nothing either. Not a single word passed out of the city. It was as if Brooklyn had drawn the curtains and closed up shop.

"Roacher was on top for a long time," Jack said to Racetrack. Racetrack nodded. "He had deals going with all the neighborhoods." Racetrack agreed this was true. "If he's really dead, the next guy's gonna have to work it out with all of us, or the deals are off."

Racetrack shifted his papes under his arm, chewed on the butt end of his cigarette, and didn't say nothing to that. He'd stopped going to Sheepshead since the bridge had metaphorically gone up in Brooklyn. No one'd asked him about it yet, but he could feel the question glittering on the tip of everyone's tongue. Like a refugee in a sympathetic country, he wasn't unwelcome, but there was the question of whether or not he'd be going home. And if he wasn't, well, where was he going to sell? There were other Brooklyn outcasts living in New York, but they also sold in New York now, and never went back: you had to have permission to sell in another city's territory, and you'd never get permission if they didn't like you where you were trying to sell. It didn't make much sense to be "Racetrack" anymore if he wasn't going to be pushing papers at the track.

Of course, Jack had to be the one to come closest to straight out asking. "So why'd you leave in the first place?" he drawled, the real question being, "How long before they'll let you go back?"

On the street, a chimney sweep boy touched his cap at Jack as he walked past their alleyway. Jack waved back, familiar-like, but that was Jack for you: master to none, but friend to the friendless, the great champion to all the street boys in Manhattan, without regard to race, creed or profession. Or origin.

It was great currency to be liked; that's just how they did things here. Racetrack had moved freely between cities, mostly by that merit. He'd worked hard to cultivate it, treated it as if it were his trade, and so they'd shared bread with him, let him stay nights sometimes, when he'd stayed out too late to head back. But at the end of the day, there'd been no question: he'd always gone home to Brooklyn. And there, they didn't always like him, and, there, they didn't always treat him right, but that was where he belonged. Where he'd always belong. Not even the boy king could change that.

Race shrugged, his expression flatly unconcerned, and answered the question as it was asked. "Me and the boys had something of a disagreement."

Jack hummed. "The boys or Spot Conlon?"

Race's mouth grimaced around his cigarette. Jack Kelly had always been too sharp for his own good. If he'd been born on the other side of the bridge, that sharpness might've been used to draw blood; if he'd played his cards right, they might've made him king.

"Maybe one more than the other," he admitted diffidently.

Satisfied for the moment, Jack leaned back against the wall. He had his suspicions about the depth of Racetrack's loyalty to Brooklyn City. He had a lot of suspicions about Racetrack Higgins, a lot of misgivings about a guy who kept his real name a secret, who had been turning sixteen for a couple years now, and who could lie to your face in the same breath as a laugh. Racetrack was smarter and harder than he passed himself off to be, and Jack didn't know if he wanted someone like that in his city. They had one of those already.

Jack could kick him out, if he wanted to. Send him on to Harlem or Midtown or the Bowery. He'd be fine there; he'd be fine anywhere; he had friends any place he'd care to go. But that was why he had to keep Racetrack here; a guy who could go anywhere, get along anywhere, the most politic guy in the state, and he'd landed on Jack's doorstep

He took one last drag of his cigarette before he ground the stub out with his toe. "Think they'll come lookin' for you?" Jack asked, keeping his pronouns deliberately plural.

Race shrugged and did the same: "Not unless someone tells 'em where I am."

Jack nodded non-committally as if being agreeable. Race had his reasons for choosing the Lower East Side, and Jack wasn't about to kill the golden goose with excessive curiosity or caution. So he cleared his throat and asked instead, "How well do you know this Spot fella, anyway?"

Racetrack pinched out the end of his smoke and pocketed it thoughtfully. Business on the streets was a completely different animal to the crowd and hustle of the Bay, and by different, he meant it was absolute garbage. Race knew how to play up a story to a jockey's interests, knew how to sweet-talk a gambler into parting with a penny for a paper, but he hadn't sold on street corners since he'd first started out. And even then, he hadn't been at it alone.

"Well enough," he replied.

Jack peered at him, trying to catch his eyes from under the low brim of his cap. "Yeah?" he asked.

Race hoisted his papers up onto his shoulder and adjusted his vest. "Yeah," he said.

"So what's he like then?"

Race gestured evasively. "He's a kid."

Jack snorted. "Yeah, he's a kid who took down Roacher Weiss and took over Brooklyn before anybody'd ever even heard his name. If he's just a kid, I'm a goddamn Rockefeller."

Race kicked at the cobblestones.

Jack counted forwards to ten and then back again. This stubborn, sullen reticence was for other Brooklynites; Race was supposed to be better than this. Jack made an impatient noise and hawked up a spit. "You friends with him then?"

A man came up and bought a paper off of Jack, and conversation stopped long enough for the transaction to happen. Race didn't think too hard about how to figure the question. His gut told him the answer even when the circumstances of his self-exile made bold proclamations otherwise. "Yeah," he conceded quietly when Jack's attention turned back to him. "We're friends."

"Good," Jack said, pocketing his money. "Cos Oddball tells me your friend's about to get some serious shit out of Queens."

Race's introspection jerked suddenly outwards. "What?"

Jack nodded and kept his eyes scanning the cluttered horizon. He didn't need to look to know what sort of shock was crawling across Racetrack's face, nor did he particularly care to see it, so he continued, "Since you know him, I figure you might help me out by telling me what you know. Queens is one thing." He glanced down at Race from above the crest of his cheekbone. "If he's gonna want to sort business here in New York, there's gonna be a lot of us in line."

Race's stunned silence remained for a moment longer before breaking. "He really did have a plan," he muttered under his breath. "Didn't think he was serious. Goddamn."

Jack took note of this. "He's on the move." There was something grudgingly admiring in his voice. "He's gotta group up fast if he's gonna keep what he's killed."

The look of plaintive fury that surfaced on Race's face was probably an accident, but while he'd schooled down his expression by the time he spoke, it still lingered in his voice. "And what if I tell you I've got no interest in any of this?"

Jack hummed. "You know," he remarked lightly, "you ain't never did tell us why you ran from Brooklyn that night. Suppose that'd make a good story to share?"

Racetrack stopped dead in the street. Jack stopped just a step ahead, but turned around in time to watch him scrub a hand over his face and into his hairline. "Jesus," Race blasphemed. "And I thought you Manhattan boys were supposed to be soft."

"Aw, Racetrack." Jack grinned. He slug an arm over Racetrack's shoulder and pulled him into an ungainly walk. "We ain't soft; we just ain't a bunch of bloodthirsty Fenian by-blows neither."

* * *

Queens was the first to test the boy king, of course. A vast tract of land without any real city center, Queens was home to just over five hundred newsies in a good year, divided into riotous neighborhoods united only by their common resentment of Brooklyn. Oddball Schumann was their leader only insomuch as Crabs Dekker was their leader, and Spitshine Meehan and Cheeseface Levine. Oddball was just the one Jack was most familiar with, and who he kept up better relations with than the rest.

Business in Queens was sporadic at best; it wasn't that the folks living in Queens didn't need the news, it was just that a whole lot of them didn't read it in English. Spillover from Brooklyn ended up over the border: kids who weren't high up enough along the hierarchy to get a bed in one of Brooklyn's overcrowded lodging houses, kids who were from Queens but didn't have enough business to make a living there – and if you didn't sleep in Brooklyn, you couldn't sell in Brooklyn, not without a price.

Roacher had set it at ten cents a hundred, and the newsies in Queens had long been crying that he was milking them dry. But Roacher Weiss was a scary bastard: nearly six feet and bulging with the muscle he put on from the work he did at the shipyard in winter. His lieutenants were all other industrial types: boys who dabbled in machinery, shipping, construction, and while none of them had been particularly clever, they'd had enough brain to know how to quell the complaints with their fists.

So now there was a new king in Brooklyn, and he was barely fourteen and scrawny and a complete unknown to boot. He'd done away with all of Roacher's boys who wouldn't pledge allegiance (which had been a lot of them), and brought in his own: still big, still dumb, but how bloody could they be without Roacher Weiss as their man and master?

Jack's Manhattan newsies waited in whispers and tenterhooks. Queens wasn't a particularly violent bunch, but they could put up a fight when necessary. Racetrack would've been the one they'd go to for taking bets on the bloodshed, but given the intimacy of the situation to him, the others did it quietly on their own on account of bad taste.

Nearly a week passed with no word of battle until finally, Oddball sent word. Spot had shown up in Long Island City on a Sunday afternoon with only one other boy in tow – muscle-headed, dull as paint – even though rules said he was allowed two. Oddball reported him quiet and unsettling, but even-handed: Roacher's selling fees, he'd agreed, were much too high, and Spot was willing to see them reduced down to eight cents a hundred if Queens would agree to move all their major card and dice games over into Brooklyn.

"Oh, that's clever," Racetrack muttered when Jack told him. "He don't need the money for the bulls if he's moving the gambling out to the suburbs, and this keeps the punks on the border happy." Roacher had come up in Bushwick, and they were less than happy that their boy had been supplanted by some Coney Island mick.

Queens grumbled in the way Queens was always going to grumble, but the conflict subsided and business resumed. But then, Queens was always going to be the easiest to keep happy, backwater that it was. It made good sense to check that box first; an easy victory under the belt was still a victory, and with all the neighborhoods of New York City sizing up his every move, Spot needed to build firm ground before stepping off Long Island. He had, as Racetrack explained it, a great deal to prove to everyone.

Midtown kept, perhaps, the closest interest in the proceedings. Ike Donnelly was no great friend to Brooklyn, nor was he a particular pal to Roacher Weiss, but separate Roacher from his shipyard palace and put him in on a rooftop in Hell's Kitchen, and you basically had Ike Donnelly.

Ike ran Midtown with a crowbar and the worldview that problems were just things he hadn't yet hit into submission. He had a habit for drink and another separate one for girls, and the highest circulation rates in Manhattan. The story of his rise to power was crowned with the legend that he'd had his predecessor framed for trying to rob a US congressman, and anything less than perfect loyalty from his boys was punishable with fists. For the most part, though, Midtown newsies were glad to call him their leader. Scummy or not, he took care of his boys when they needed taking care of: made sure the younger ones weren't bullied too often, made sure the older ones didn't get caught stealing, made sure everyone had a place to go in winter. As far as leaders went, that put him a cut above most.

It didn't hurt that Midtown had always enjoyed an element of prestige amongst the newsies, being the easiest place in the city to shift papers and lift wallets and be home just in time for supper.

(You didn't invite Midtown newsies around for craps unless you wanted to go to bed a few nickels short. Bastards had the quickest hands this side of the Hudson.)

And Ike might've been able to keep his little kingdom of thievery running forever, but for the rumors that he'd been looking more and more his age these days, his fat, round babyface steadily losing its camouflage. However well you did for yourself, selling papes was a kid's work. The older you looked, the harder it was to compete; the newsboy was always half nuisance, half charity-case. A kid was a newsie because he had no one taking care of him at home. A man was a newsie because he wasn't good enough to make anything else of himself. No one was gonna buy a paper off a grown-ass man, no matter how good the headlines were. And Grandpa Ike, as they called him out of earshot, was starting to be young only in the ages of expensive booze.

So it made some sort of sense when Dutchy scampered back to Duane Street that Tuesday after the Queens deal, grinning with gossip and bull. "He said, 'Kid's calling himself king when he's still leaking milk out of the corner of his mouth'," he recited gleefully at dinner. "He said if Spot Conlon was so tough, he'd come around Midtown and go a round in the ring with him. Also that 'Roacher was a pantywaist and a nance, and probably sucked on the other tit.'"

A circle of "oooh"s went around the room, then rounded expectantly on Race. He put down his soup spoon and fastidiously straightened it in his bowl, before he said, "Probably would've gone for 'windbag four-flusher' myself," and the "oooh"s went another round like a church basket.

"He's just lookin' for a way out," Jack hypothesized, when he and Race were alone, outside on the corner for a smoke. "If his own boys put him down, he's got no ghost of a chance. Get an outsider to knock him out, and he could just go quietly, disappear."

Racetrack's eyebrows rose into his hairline. "You kill your kings in Manhattan?" His skepticism so heavy it was nearly disdainful.

Jack snorted. "Not usually. We're not barbarians."

Racetrack laughed, though not very hard or for very long, and Jack grinned back at him. There was something to be said about being an old newsboy; it wasn't easy and it wasn't fun. There weren't many of them around for a reason. You knew how the world worked by then, if you hadn't figured it out already, but you had to swallow it, every day, or it'd show in your face or crack through your voice and – one sniff of it – and the punters would go elsewhere. Jack wasn't quite there yet; he had another two, three years in him before all the shaving in the world wasn't going to be enough to smooth away the worldliness in his face. He didn't know how old Race was, but it was older than he looked, and it came through in moments like this.

"Ike's an idiot if he thinks he's coming out on top of this," Race said, sighing. Weariness had started to drop his gaze, nowadays, like it was simply too heavy to lift. "He's no bare-knuckler, from what I hear, and Spot's not exactly the kinda guy to pull punches out of respect for his elders, you know what I'm sayin'?"

Jack nodded. "Yeah, but is he gonna take him up on it?"

"Hasn't turned down a fight that I know of yet." Racetrack peered up at him warily. "Why? You wanna go watch?"

Jack shrugged. "Might be useful to see how he fights," he pointed out. "Who knows, I might finally get to meet the guy." But it wasn't meant to be.

Spot Conlon crossed the bridge Wednesday evening so quietly even Jack didn't hear about it till him and Race stepped foot into the lodging house and found the usual Central Park crowd up on their feet in a swarm around them.

"He just walked right in, on his own. Said he'd left his boys out on the street round the corner, and it wasn't like he needed 'em anyway, with just Ike and his sissies around," Dutchy said, a bit breathless from running too many sentences together. "He had this cane with him, like this –" he gestured about an arm's span apart "– stuck in his suspenders, like a sword. Then he was all, 'I hear Grandpa Ike wants words with Brooklyn, and –"

"We thought Ike was gonna get his head beat in," interjected Skittery. "Cos Spot Conlon, like, he just kept tapping his stick on the floor, like _tap tap, tap tap tap_ and like, Ike came up and –"

"He's not as short as you said he was, Race," Boots added, aside, then looked Racetrack head to toe and reconsidered, "well, maybe he was, but Ike was tiny, next to him. Came up to only about here," he gestured to about nose height.

"– but Ike had all his boys round him, see, only no one really knew what to do, so then Ike starts talking –"

"– calling him names, and like –"

"– and it just kept getting quieter and quieter –"

"– and Spot's just standing there, still tapping his stick, just like –"

"– _tap tap, tap tap tap_ –"

"Whoa," said Jack, holding up his hands like a surrender. Racetrack stood, frozen, next to him, his lips so thin they'd disappeared into his mouth. Jack considered gauging what that meant, but decided on, "Just tell me the important bits. What happened to Ike?"

Dutchy shook his head so violently his cap twisted. "No, see, that's the thing –"

"– so Ike goes all red in the face, like –"

"Hey, am I tellin' this story or are you shitheads?" Dutchy demanded, and glared at Boots and Skittery till they went muttery and quiet. He rounded back to Jack. "So Ike's goin' on and on right? Calls his mom a whore, says his dad's a pimp, says all sorts of nasty things about his sister–"

"He's got a sister?" Jack asked.

Dutchy waved his hands. "Who knows? Don't stop Ike from calling her a two-bob cunt though."

Some boys twittered nervously, but were quickly shushed. Dutchy went on, "So he finally stops, and he's breathing all hard, like, but Spot ain't saying anything, and so then Ike just shouts, 'Well?!'

"And Spot keeps tapping, for, like, a half a minute more, and then he stops. And then he says, cool as you like –" Dutchy pulled up his chin and looked down his nose in an expression that made Race wince "– 'Brooklyn says "hi"'. And then he _leaves_. No fight, nothing, he didn't even do nothin', not even –"

"Oh, he did something," Racetrack muttered, but Jack was distracted by his boys, and only glanced back at him for a half-second of partial comprehension before being swamped into the group.

Ike didn't last out the year, but no one could know that yet. For now, there was just the story – passed from whisper to whisper, ear to ear, making its way all throughout the city, the words changing, the details, the myth – and the image, conjured with no great accuracy, of Ike Donnelly, standing bereft and abandoned in the middle of a lodging house room, watching as his best chance for freedom walked out the door and left him in his place.

* * *

It was going on two weeks after Grandpa Ike got his visit, and things had seemed to finally quiet down. Roosevelt was kicking up support for a war with the Dagoes, papers were selling good, and every second conversation wasn't about Spot Conlon. Race was still around, sure, but no one minded too much anymore. He seemed at last to be falling back into his old self again, and the Manhattan newsies liked that guy. Racetrack had always been the guy who'd talk your ear off and the guy next to you's, for good measure. Stories, anecdotes, bad advice for the tracks, and dumb jokes that had even the bairns rolling their eyes: never the same thing twice, his adenoidal Brooklyn patter just under the permanent laugh in his voice.

But then the Bronx started up. They also wanted words with Brooklyn – had for some time – but like Queens, hadn't had the gall or opportunity, in Roacher's time. When this got around to Jack, he tried to stop it, tried to pass on that on no uncertain terms should they try to challenge Brooklyn City on this matter, no matter how diplomatically-minded their new king seemed. But when the Bronx had sent back that Manhattan should keep its goddamned nose out of other people's business, Race had sworn a streak so blue he nearly got himself kicked out of the lodging house.

The beef was this: a year ago last summer, a knife fight had broken out just outside Eastern Park between a couple of Bronx kids and a group of Brooklyn boys. Things went as things always went, and one of the Bronx kids got stabbed in the face. He was okay now, minus an eye, but the Bronx wanted blood. Eye for an eye, they said. It was only fair.

"Since when has Brooklyn cared about 'fair'?" Racetrack said, jittering around his cigarette like he was coming down with a cold. "Since when did Jimmy McNulty care about 'fair'? And why ain't Injun Jeff talking him out of it?"

"Injun's only got the East Bronx and Jimmy's been itchin' for a fight ever since his kid brother got knifed," Jack told him lowly.

Racetrack hissed in disgust and nearly dropped his smoke, trying to flick off the ash. "_This_ is why Brooklyn thinks you're a joke," he spat. "Great City of New York, and you dumbasses can't even get your own goddamn neighborhoods in line, it's goddamn pathetic, it's a goddamn–"

The other boys were scattered around the lodging room, staring fixedly at their playing cards and lacing up their boots with great intensity. Jack's mouth pinched flat across his face and he pulled Racetrack to his feet, dragged him downstairs for a walk around the corner.

Outside the house, Race was still edgy and full of nerves, but better. "This ain't gonna be pretty, Cowboy," he said, stopping to fumble for his matchbook. "You get it, right? He's gotta show them that he looks after his boys."

Jack stopped with him and leaned back against a crumbly brick wall. The space between tenements was strung thick with laundry waving limply in the sticky summer evening, but through the gaps in the sheets and shirts and underpants, you could almost see the sun. Jack liked to imagine that there's a place somewhere on earth where you could just look up anywhere and see all the colors of the sunset spread across the sky. Somewhere where the stink and the noise and the glare of New York couldn't block out the horizon.

A couple dollars, a couple years, a couple hundred miles would do it, and he'd be gone. No more boys looking to him for answers, no more newsprint staining his hands. No more pennies dropped into sewer grates, no more boy kings posturing for power. Just him alone, as he was meant to be, no one asking a thing of him. Free.

"Yeah, Race," he said quietly. "I get it."

Racetrack looked up at him. The expression on his face was hunted and pained. "We gotta stop this, Jack. Someone's gonna get hurt."

Privately, Jack took one last look at his dreams, and then he put them away, like shutting a door. This wasn't the life for dreaming, anyway. "This Spot Conlon," he said, taking a breath, "he'd kill again?"

"Yes," Race answered savagely. He knew Jack didn't believe him entirely and Race didn't blame him: he wasn't one of his, and Race wouldn't believe him either, in Jack's shoes. But when Racetrack had said he knew Spot Conlon, _he knew him_: straight from the start, through thick and thin, through shit and through shitter, all the way up until that day, that moment when he didn't any more.

Jack blinked, astonished at the ferocity of Racetrack's certainty. Plenty of guys talked about killing, but it was always just that, just talk. If Spot Conlon killed Roacher Weiss, no one believed it. Half of Jack's boys were still holding out for proof, while the other half juggled conspiracies that Roacher had run off the join the circus, or the vaudeville circuit, or had been eaten by a shark. But there was something about the stillness of Racetrack's shoulders, the bloodlessness in the line of his mouth that spoke of truth, and Jack believed him.

"All right," he said. "I'll see what we can do." Carefully, he laid a palm along the back of Racetrack's neck, and Race flinched, but didn't recoil.

The Lower East Side wasn't the biggest territory on the map, nor the most populous, but it had Jack Kelly, and Jack Kelly had clout. So when Jack Kelly said that Jimmy McNulty's band of Bronx newsies were barred from crossing the bridge into Brooklyn, Jimmy McNulty was barred. At least for a while.

"If I got you across the bridge, do you think you could talk him down?" Jack asked Racetrack. "I can hold Jimmy off for a couple days, maybe even till the weekend, if he's feelin' respectful, but that's it."

"We gotta make sure he gets word of it first," Race told him. "Can't just march in there out of nowhere, half-cocked. If he don't know we're comin', there ain't no way he's gonna see us."

"Yeah, all right," Jack assented, "how do we do that?"

Racetrack tipped his head and looked out onto the street. During the day, it all seemed so distant; to all the people who saw them, they were just boys, all of them, hawking headlines, persistently obnoxious, occasionally barefoot, and interchangeably grubby. But the truth of the matter, the real intricacies of their lives, was never far out of sight, if only they knew where to look. There, sure enough, on the corner, was a bootblack with his box, leaning against a post, holding terribly still and quiet.

"Here, hold these," Race said and handed Jack his papes.

Jack watched as Racetrack walked over to the boy, watched him clap him on the shoulder with a friendly hand that turned swiftly into a fist when the boy tried to run. Racetrack said something quickly and the boy stopped struggling, wide-eyed, as Race smoothed down his shirt in a reassuring sort of motion. The boy looked wary, his body half-turned, but he nodded as Racetrack spoke and, when Race eventually let him go, he fled without a glance back.

"Who was that?" Jack asked when Racetrack came back and collected his papers.

Race smiled, and it was only a little bit mean. "A little birdie," he said.

The next day, the boy was back on the corner, and when Race walked back over to talk to him, he relayed a short message with only a modicum of twitching, and then he picked up his box and left.

"He's expecting us," Race told Jack. "We can cross over tonight."

They only sold fifty papes between them that day – Jack distracted by Manhattan's potentially bruised friendship with the Bronx and Racetrack with the idea of going home for the first time in just over a month – but it was enough to tide them over till the next day, so that was all that mattered.

When afternoon came and the sun began to sink over the rooftops, Jack left Racetrack outside the lodging house while he went up to tell his boys where he was going and what he'd be doing.

"You're going into Brooklyn with just Racetrack?" Boots asked, taken aback.

"You want one of us to come with you, Jack?" Mush said, his brow twisted with concern.

"Don't think this is a good idea," Skittery added, and then appended, "I mean, Racetrack's good people, and all, but he ain't exactly one of us, you know."

Jack frowned. "Hey, what is this?" he demanded. His eyes swept around the room, and everyone who was looking at him now suddenly looked away. It wasn't that they didn't feel for Racetrack; exile was a lot for anyone, even if it was self-imposed. And it might've been easier to trust him if he was one of them now, but he wasn't, and now he was going back: it was as if he was never their problem in the first place.

Jack wasn't so easy to placate though. "The guy's been staying with us for a month now, and he ain't stolen anything, he's started no fights, he's paid his own rent and sold his own papes. Specs, for chrissake," he turned and waved, incredulous, "he bunked with you. And Dutchy, he let you bum his smokes."

"He's an all right guy," Crutchy emphasized, hobbling over to stand next to Jack. "But Jack, we've only seen him here on our side of the bridge. You sure you know what he's like when he's at home?"

Jack laughed, a sudden burst of sound. "He's not gonna stab me as soon as we cross the bridge, Crutch, he don't even own a knife. He's our friend," he said. "He needs our help."

Crutchy raised his eyebrows. "Is he askin'?"

Jack shook his head. "No, Crutch, I am."

"Well if he ain't askin', we ain't helpin'," Crutchy said with a firm and resolute nod. "Brooklyn ain't gonna owe us nothing if we help one o' theirs and they don't ask."

Jack looked out at his boys, that familiar collection of small, dark, unwashed faces, and tried to muster words for them, some cajoling rouse to friendship or camaraderie, of solidarity toward their fellow man, but they all rang hollow, even in his own ears. They weren't men. These were kids. They couldn't feel the weight of responsibility because it hadn't dawned on them that they had any. They didn't understand the worth of a life because they were still only playing at theirs. Their little lives, their little concerns, and the familiar streets of Lower Manhattan were a big enough world for them.

It was quick and it was sudden, but Jack was struck, then, by the pointlessness of it all. What was he involving them for anyway? Jack ran things for them; they let him. That was the extent of their participation. The whole world out there, and they didn't want to look past their own doorstep.

Coolly, he told them, "You guys're better than this."

The uncomfortable quiet shifted to a stony silence. Crutchy raised his chin to him. "Maybe," he said, waving his crutch dismissively. "But it ain't our business." He turned away, but added, over his shoulder, "Good luck to ya then, Cowboy. Can't say we didn't warn ya."

The others murmured in agreement. Jack set his mouth. "Yeah, and your mother's," he muttered and left.

* * *

It was a mile walk over Brooklyn Bridge. It took half an hour if you took your time, but with Jack reluctant to leave his city and with Racetrack inexplicably dragging his heels, it took just under an hour. By the time they got there, the sun was burning red and low over the horizon.

"Roacher did his business on the docks," Race told Jack distractedly as they walked down towards the water. The line of tension in his spine had stiffened steadily as they walked, and now, as they approached the river, he stood ramrod straight, like he was being led by bayonets.

But there was no one to meet them, not even when they passed through Fulton Landing, and the dusty, anonymous streets of Vinegar Hill let them slip through unchallenged. Without eyes to watch them, they were just two more faces in the crowd, ducking their heads past the coppers on their horses, stepping between factory workers and night shifters. There wasn't a single street boy or newsie in sight.

When they got to the docks, they found them, too, deserted, except for some shipyard men lounged atop of a cluster of barrels, and a group of kids stripped down to their long johns, swimming.

Racetrack's steps had quickened as they walked, but now he slowed and stopped. "I don't get it, if he's not here –" Racetrack's bewilderment froze on his face when one of the boys, hearing their approach, turned to face him.

"Higgins?" he called. "That you?"

Racetrack smiled, but slowly, in increments, like he was piecing it together as he went along. "Hiya Sweets," he said, and waved a little.

"Shit, it is you." Sweets flung an arm out over the end of the pier and hoisted himself up. "Race, where you been?" He pattered over across the planks in wet footsteps, his dark hair dripping into his eyes. Race waited as Sweets tried to dry his hand on his wet pants, and then they spat on their palms and shook. "You just' disappeared," Sweets said good-naturedly. "We thought maybe you'd died."

Racetrack shrugged. "Had to get out of the city for a while," he intoned. "It was getting a bit heavy."

Sweets looked taken aback. "Heavy? For you? What're you talking about, it was you and Spot, wasn't it? You guys went in together and –"

"Hey, yeah, speakin' of Spot," Racetrack said quickly. He could see Jack looking at him in his peripheral vision, the look on his face intent. "Figured he'd be down here, but apparently he ain't. You know where he does business these days?"

"Yeah, sure," Sweets said, but the tone of his voice had turned suspicious. "He's up by the warehouses, where you guys used to hustle cards. Who's this?" He gestured at Jack with his chin and a watchful glare.

"Kelly," Jack said, spitting and holding out his hand. "Jack Kelly. Spot invited me."

Sweets took his hand and squeezed a couple measures harder than strictly necessary. "Jack Kelly," he said. He eyed him with a predator's intent. "Kelly," he repeated. "Yeah, I heard of you. You're the one who tried to keep Jimmy McNulty from crossing the bridge."

Jack's fist clenched. Sweets hissed in pain, but Racetrack ignored him. "Wait," he demanded, pushing past Jack. "Whaddya mean, 'tried to'? You mean McNulty's here?"

Sweets yanked his hand back and flexed it gingerly. "Yeah, Jesus," he said, fully wary now. "Got here about an hour ago. Had about six too many guys with him, but Spot said to let 'em pass. They got the welcome party and everything."

Racetrack grabbed Jack's elbow. "We gotta get to the warehouses," he said. His face had gone pale beneath his sun-baked complexion, and his eyes were round as coins. "That stupid punk kid McNulty's gonna get himself killed."

They saved their breath for running, but Race could feel Jack's questions burning holes in the back of his head. Race didn't have anything to say to him, any explanations he wanted to hear. Jack wasn't from around here; he didn't have any stake in how things turned out. Jack could always go home. And if he wasn't Race's friend anymore at the end of the day, then so be it. More important, though, was that Spot had lied to them and tricked them, and Racetrack wasn't even sore about it, just afraid.

The shouting rang out a full industrial block away from the fight, and once his ears picked up on it, Race picked up the pace, sprinting as if it was his life on the line, not McNulty's.

"Hey, Racetrack!" one of the lookouts called.

"He's alive?"

"Racetrack, buddy, you can't–" Someone grabbed him by the vest and held on, even when Race's forehead collided with his chin in the struggle.

"Jack!" Race shouted, and Jack – with his six inch, thirty pound advantage – tore them apart and Race made a break for the warehouse.

Brooklyn newsies were school-circled around in rings of whooping raucousness, a thrashing mass of pumping fists and shouted obscenities. When Race tried to push past them, they barely noticed.

"Yeah, kill 'im!" someone shouted. There was a yell of pain that cut through the cacophony, and the crowd roared. Race's efforts redoubled, his heart like a living thing in his throat, choking his breath.

"Lemme through!" he yelled, crushed between the press of bodies closing in around him. "Chrissake!" He dug his elbow into someone's kidney and that cleared enough space to get him a good grab at the back of another boy's shirt. Pulling on him to lever himself, and in one last shove, Race burst to the front of the crowd with a stumble.

There was McNulty, his white shirt streaked red with blood, knife in hand. He looked like he'd taken a couple of punches to the face: his eyelid drooped and his lip was bleeding, and he swung in wide, disjointed arcs like a drunkard. But then there was Spot, his hat discarded but otherwise pristine, standing there, swaying, not ten feet away from where Race had barged through the line. His own knife he held loose in one hand one moment and then the other in the next.

"Come on!" Spot would taunt when he'd backed up against the wall of bodies, and McNulty would lunge, miss, and get clipped in shallow slices as Spot dodged around him with alaudine ease.

Spot had always fought with an economy of motion that made him difficult not to watch. He had a certain surety in bearing that made it seem like he knew what you were doing before you did. It started with a creeping in the eyes that took over his face, focused his movement until he was one fine edge, knife-like. Race didn't know where he'd learnt it, or if he'd learnt it at all; it was a skill he'd acquired before they'd ever met, but it was the easiest thing to admire about him and the first thing Race had learnt to despise.

"Stop it!" Race shouted, but his voice was lost in the calls for "Get on with it!" and the agreements of "Yeah!" "Let him have it!" that followed.

Race cupped his fingers around his mouth, even as Spot carved a new line of blood down McNulty's forearm. "Spot!"

Spot looked up and around, his straw-colored hair loose around his ears and stringy with sweat. For a moment, it seemed as if he'd heard Racetrack through the din, but in the next, Spot stepped past McNulty's knife and punched him square in the chest with one balled fist. McNulty reeled, and the crowd jeered.

"Kill 'im!" came the cry again. Spot spun his knife.

"No!" Racetrack screamed. "Spot! No!" and Spot looked over, scanned the crowd, met Racetrack dead in the eye –

That's when the whistles sounded. "Police! Stay where you are! Hands where we can see them!"

The crowd leapt apart as one.

"Shit, it's the bulls!"

"Go! Go! Leg it!"

Bodies pressed towards the exits, dipping and diving through cracks and broken wall-slats. The whistles shrieked in discordant unity and boys screamed and hollered and Spot just stood there looking at Race, eyes pale and bare and unblinking, and Race just looked back.

But then McNulty swayed to his feet, slurring, "You slimy boggy bastard," punch drunk and bleeding from a dozen-and-a-half places but still rushing forward, knife raised, ready to strike.

Racetrack's body reacted on instinct faster than his mind did. "Watch out!" he shouted, and threw himself at McNulty's side. McNulty yelped and twisted and Race felt metal cut through his shirt and skid across his shoulderblade in one blind moment of panic and pain.

"What the hell?" McNulty growled. He shoved his hand under Race's chin.

"Don't you fucking touch him!" came a snarl, and there were fists yanking at McNulty, smashing into his face, gathering Racetrack to his feet, gripping his forearms in five-point vices. "Did he get you?" Spot demanded, shaking him a little, his face suddenly much too close.

Racetrack shook his head but said nothing except, "We gotta go, Spot, they're gonna catch us, we gotta go," because it was never any use lying to Spot anyway, and he didn't have time to waste. He just dug his fingertips into Spot's arms and held on.

Spot nodded, kicked McNulty once more for good measure. Then he took Race's hand. "Let's go," he said, and they ran.

* * *

Here's an experiment not meant to offend anyone: if you like this fic, rec it to your friends, because I'll post the next chapter

a) upon 100 pageviews (I'll keep count for everyone since I'll be x-post spamming this to at least 3 different platforms)  
b) upon receiving 300 (cumulative) words in comments which I hope isn't being unreasonable  
c) in the most plausible circumstance, in exactly 1 month (July 30th) since I sincerely doubt this'll draw enough traffic for either a) or b)

Because goddamnit, I'm a feedback whore, I want attention, and I totally apologise for that, sorry.

ETA: Chapter 2's up. Good work, guys.


	2. Racetrack, Spot

more notes & tags, as you do:

and now for an intermission where we talk about our feelz, get those feelz organs ready kids, because fuck worldbuilding and politics this is the shit that really matters, wait what am i saying i love worldbuilding and politics, trolololo, protip number 2: the 1800s shat on pretty much everyone, accordingly: implications of child abuse, i won't blame you for reading this as slash but you'd be missing a pretty important thematic point, actually its intended to be read as confused one-sided teenaged-boy-feelings so i guess we all win

* * *

**Chapter 2: Racetrack, Spot**

This, they'd done before: running, tripping, calling to each other, pulling when one fell behind. This, they'd spent years doing – what felt like their entire lives – just two of them, foul river mist in their faces, voices lost to the wind. So if Spot pulled a little bit harder this time, and Racetrack tripped a little more, it balanced out in the grand scale of things, because there had been times when Race had been the one pulling, Spot tripping, both of them running for their lives.

Things felt right, in those moments, natural, and it almost felt like if they ran fast enough, got far enough, they would never have to stop.

But they stopped just before Race's lungs gave out. Spot led them up to an abandoned building, red brick moldering and cracking with age. There was a crooked, faded sign that hung above the upper story windows that, in the settling dusk, read only _Alc mil a Fab ic Co._. In only the very back of his mind, Race wondered what ever had happened to Jack Kelly, and whether he'd got out in time and all right. But then Spot turned to him, pale, elfin face split in a great, toothy grin, and Jack Kelly would have to take care of himself. "You first," he said, releasing Race's hand to gesture up to a broken second floor window just big enough to for a boy their size to crawl through.

Race had shown Spot how to pick his safehouses, in those early years. This wasn't one of theirs, but it had all the qualities Race had taught him to look out for: out of the way, abandoned, and unexpectedly difficult to get into. Spot had his hands cupped, waiting to boost Racetrack up, and Spot never did like to be kept waiting.

With his sour pulse and his torn shoulder, it was difficult to haul himself up those ten feet, but manageable. What really hurt was pulling Spot up after him. While younger and still smaller than Racetrack, Spot was by no means little, so it took a bit longer than it should have, with Spot having to climb on mostly his own steam, but when he reached the window ledge, Race heaved a great pull and hauled him over. Spot lost his balance at the sudden shift and fell into him, the both of them landing heavily on the rot-soft floorboards.

"Ha," Spot huffed, nose buried somewhere under Racetrack's arm. "Ha," he said again, followed by a quick breath of air, inhaled and exhaled with force, and he was laughing.

Spot laughed with his whole body, great shudders of it shaking through his shoulders and down into his spine. He'd laughed more when he was younger, set off by funny or dumb or just unfortunate things, but it'd petered out of late. Still sounded the same though: higher-pitched than you'd expect, looking at him, wheezing at the ends. Still felt the same, like his whole world was being shook, when he muffled it in Race's body.

Race laughed too, because why not? A month, he'd spent, turning Spot Conlon over and backwards and sideways in his head, trying to make him work, trying to reconcile what he'd known about this boy with what he'd learnt, and he'd achieved nothing, understood nothing. Here though, with Spot on his chest, crushing the breath out of him before he'd had a chance to partake, laughing into him with fierce wracking gasps like crying, it was easy. It was easy to fold fingers into the soft hair on the back of Spot's skull, to touch the curve of his neck, the crest of his cheek; easy to remember why it was he'd looked after this boy for so long, taught him, protected him, kept him like family.

It was easy to forget the reasons why he'd left in the first place.

Their laughing tapered off eventually, as it was bound to do, but Racetrack wasn't sad to see it go. His head felt light, his lungs clear of air, like he'd just expelled something heavy and toxic – but necessary – from his chest. Now he was just tired.

His fingertips still touched the cool edge of Spot's ear as Spot coughed out one last giggle. They lay, heaped together, in quiet for a moment longer.

"My hand is wet," Spot mumbled, face turned towards the hand in question. He rubbed his fingers together. They came apart in tacky sounds. "Race," he said, and sat up. The inside of the building was so dark he couldn't see his own nose in front of him. Cautiously, he put his hand to his nose, then touched it with the tip of his tongue. "Race," he said again. "This is blood."

There were hands then, pulling Race up when all Race wanted to do was lay down and sleep, leading Race over to a puddle of moonlight and pushing at his clothes when Race just felt cold and sore, searching across his limbs, his torso, his neck, when Race wished for nothing more than to be left alone.

"He cut you," Spot said, finding the wound at last. It still bled sluggishly, but Race could feel it tugging where it had dried against his clothes every time he moved. "That bastard," Spot said, trying to clear the cloth away with uncertain touches. "I'll kill him. I swear to god, Race, I'll make him pay–"

The blank white buzz in Racetracks mind suddenly splintered to red. "Stop it," Racetrack snarled. He jerked away from Spot's fingers. "Talk like that one more time, and I promise you'll never see me again, never."

Spot's mouth snapped shut with an audible click, Race noted with a bitter sort of satisfaction, but then, Spot had always made it perfectly clear that, by his reckoning, the best and only place Racetrack belonged was next to him.

Silently, Spot shifted his knees until he was sitting behind Race. He put his palm up against the worst of the wound and held it there, pressing down. Whole minutes passed like that. Racetrack kept his head bowed forward, pushed by Spot's hand, pulled by gravity. Outside their broken window, the moon made silver shadows on the river; on the other shore, New York threw its golden lights out to join them like ribbons.

Finally, Spot asked him in a perfectly toneless voice, "Is that why you left?"

Racetrack was glad for his coldness, his entirely academic tone of inquiry. It made it easier to be unkind to him. "You know why I left."

"Yeah," Spot admitted, too easily for Racetrack's liking. "I know."

Race shouldered away from him purposively, but he didn't turn around. "So why're you asking?"

Spot let him go, and stretched out his fingers from one another. The skin of his palm was stiff. He shrugged, even though Race couldn't see him. "I thought you might have better reasons now."

Racetrack scathed, "What, my reasons ain't good enough for you?"

"Roacher had to go," Spot explained patiently, as if with long practice. "We had to be the ones who did it."

"No, we didn't," Race said sharply.

"No one else was going to."

"You don't know that."

"So we should've just let someone else take care of it?" Spot wished Racetrack would turn and face him. He didn't like talking to the back of Race's head, not being able to see his face. It made him that much harder to read. "Let Roacher keep doing what he was doing, sit back and take it? Guys were getting hurt, Race, what were we supposed to do, not take him out?"

"Don't give me that bullshit." He showed him a little bit of his face, then, quarter-turned, so Spot could see the tight pull of his mouth but not the anger in his eyes. "You think I don't know how those stories got started? I was there, Spot."

"You were," Spot acknowledged, thinly. "So why all this?"

Racetrack made a violent noise of objection in his throat. "You're an ungrateful little punk, you know that?" he snapped. His fingers flexed in and out of his palms, but it was doing little to relieve the resentment he could feel building up through his spine. "What else do you want from me?" he demanded. He could see the shape of Spot's face out of the corner of one eye, but not its details. "Huh? I gave you everything. I gave you goddamn everything –"

Spot compressed his lips. "I didn't ask you to–"

Race turned suddenly, pulling at Spot's shirt, fumbling to part the cloth, and Spot couldn't move, his arms unexpectedly rubber. He could feel his pulse pick up and his breath go short, but Racetrack's hands were swift and searching and impatient, and Spot didn't know what to do, how to do it – but then he stopped.

The scar was still there, slung low across Spot's neck, just under the collar of his shirt. Racetrack smoothed a thumb over Spot's throat. "You were this close to dying –" Spot swallowed under his hand, and shifted to move away, but Racetrack wouldn't let him.

"No," he said. "Look at this, look –" Spot turned his head away. Race seized him by the jaw. "_Look_," he commanded. Spot looked up, then, met his eyes in a brief and unseeing moment, but then looked away again just as quickly. Racetrack let him go and sat back.

"You ever need to remind yourself how things really went down, you take a look at this," Race told him forcefully. "Then you remind yourself that you don't get to tell me what you did or didn't ask me to do." He tapped emphatically on Spot's collarbone. "Not when you have this this."

Spot had his face turned so far aside, Race could only look on him in profile. "He got the drop on me," he mumbled, "but I'm fine now."

"No," Racetrack said. He really was tired. "You would've killed him."

Spot looked at him quickly, disoriented. "I know," he said, "but I didn't, you–

"You _wanted_ to kill him, Spot. You were going to do it." Racetrack hugged a knee to his chest and put his head down on top of it. He didn't want to look at Spot anymore. "You were going to kill a guy," he said, muffled, "and for what? This?" He gestured toward the window, the river, the city beyond. "An extra two bucks at the end of the week?" he suggested. "The chance to be the ones the bulls look for when something dirty goes down?

Spot drew himself up, his shoulders squared. "For Brooklyn," he said in a cold little voice.

Race laughed, sighing into his own chest. "This lousy shithole?" he disdained.

"What else is there?"

"Everything else," Racetrack insisted. His arm swept out, encompassing. "Anything else. You could've had anything at all but you chose Brooklyn."

Spot paused. "I couldn't have had everything," he pointed out, reasonably.

Race had never wanted to have to do this, ever, as long as he lived. He let out a hollow breath. "No, Spot, you really could've."

Spot opened his mouth again, as if to reply, but then stopped. Racetrack had prayed before; it was something he'd been taught to do but he never really took to. Every now and again, he'd ask for things like for an extra nickel, an empty bed, a full stomach, a warm night. Now he prayed to just melt into the air, because this was the part Racetrack had never wanted to reach, this bare and artless moment where Spot, in all his battered pride and assaulted dignity, reached across the space between them to touch him softly on the shoulder. "You're not everything, Race," he said, and he might've even sounded a bit sorry for it.

Racetrack squeezed his eyes shut and spat, lashing out with the will to hurt but with no real target but himself, "Well, that's too bad, ain't it? Cos you are."

The touch on Race's shoulder turned fierce. Spot forced his eyes up to his. His face was a twisted knot of conflicting emotions, openly hurting in a way he'd had Race convinced he'd grown out of. "I didn't want you to leave, I wanted you to stay," he hissed. "I told you to and you didn't even say no, you just left." Something quavered on the edge of his voice, held for a moment, like it might right itself, but then tumbled over and broke.

The impulse to help him reared its head, rooted in an instinct to protect that would never leave him be. But that was Racetrack's shame: his failure to curb, his pattern of overindulgence that had led to this moment, and so it wouldn't do to back down now. He told Spot steadily, around a cottony, dry mouth, "You didn't give me a choice."

Spot's eyes loomed luminous as he leant forwards toward the light. "You want a choice?" he asked urgently. His voice had gone high and pinched. "All right then, I'll give you a choice. I'm askin' you this time." He fumbled for Race's hand, found it and pulled until Race looked up and met him in the eye. Then he said, "Will you stay?"

"No."

Spot burst into giggles again, an edge of sickly hysteria, this time, creeping into the breaths between. His fingers twisted painfully into Race's as Race sat there and listened, hated it, deserved it, knew Spot deserved it too, even more than he did. He wanted to restrain him, or shush him, or hold him until he stopped. He did none of those things; they were comforts that came from a place that neither of them deserved anymore. Spot eventually resolved into quiet on his own. "I'd fight you for this," he hiccupped, voice still high.

"See, that's what you don't get," Race explained nervily. "They don't do things like this, over there. When a guy has a problem with another guy, the first thing they reach for ain't their switchblades."

Spot made a wet, derisive noise. "Then they're soft."

"Yeah," Race conceded, "maybe, but over there, I'm not gonna have to watch you die am I?"

Spot replied, with a dismissive clack in his throat, "I'm not gonna die."

"Yeah you are," Racetrack told him. He was talking faster than he wanted to be, but he could feel the vibration of everything that needed to be said fluttering up through his abdomen like winged insects. "Even if you live to a hundred and five, you'll be dead long before they put you in the ground."

"What," Spot mocked, "in the eyes of God?" He moved forward further into the light solely for the effect, so that Racetrack could see the contempt in his face when he said, "Didn't know you'd taken Jesus into your heart, Patrick."

Racetrack stiffened. "Don't call me that."

Spot sneered. "Call you what, Paddy?"

"I'm warning you." His voice was soft.

"Yeah?" Spot crowded up to him, up on his knees, pushing into Racetrack's space till there was none left between them. "What've you got?" he taunted. "What'cha gonna do to put that fear of God in me?" He leaned into Race's ear, asked him, "Make your daddy proud?"

Racetrack took a long, stuttering breath and held it. It seemed to help. "Nothing."

Spot sat back a bit and peered at him, nose to nose as they were. Race's eyes were downcast, hiding any flash of anger that might've risen up in them, and the dark hid the rest. Spot scoffed. He might as well have been baring his throat. "Yeah," he scathed, "didn't think so."

Racetrack looked up. His eyes were tired and his head was bowed and Spot thought, for a moment, that maybe he'd gone too far. But then Race butt him between the eyes, and it was on.

Race didn't like fighting; he'd never throw a fist when a flattering word, an easing gesture would do. He could hold his own – wouldn't have survived seventeen years of Brooklyn if he hadn't – but he didn't live for it, like Spot did, and there was nothing dignified, nothing dexterous about the way he fought. He aimed to hurt with an unscrupulous efficiency: nails and elbows and kneecaps jabbing into all the soft places on a body. He must've known he didn't have a chance, because he fought like he was up against the bell, like he had something to prove and no way to prove it but with injury. And he might've done all right for himself, but for the fact that Spot did like fighting, had always done, and that put him on top, easily, naturally, riding the rhythm of violence with the familiarity of long practice.

Spot spun Racetrack with an effortless arm around his ribcage, pushed his head down and locked his throat into the crook of an elbow, squeezing steadily, hard enough for Race's vision to speckle with lights, but not so hard that he couldn't cuss him out. Race tried to get his feet under him, swing his head back, maybe knock Spot in the chin and loosen his grip, but Spot had him grappled between his arm and his bony chest, and he was stronger than Racetrack, now, when they might've been evenly matched a year ago, six months.

Racetrack scrabbled in his hold: trying to kick out Spot's knees, maybe, throw him off balance. He hooked his fingers into Spot's forearm and pried, his heartbeat straining unevenly in his chest. "Get off me," he hissed, jaw clenched around his words.

Spot huffed. His breath hit race on the side of the face, and Racetrack strained to get away. "You're bleeding again," he said. At least he was breathing hard.

"I don't care." Race jerked, hard, but Spot held on. "Let go of me."

Spot's grip held firm. "No," he said. And that was that.

Minutes passed, and Racetrack seethed silently between gritted teeth, cursing Spot's sudden growth, his own slightness of limb. He must've took after his mam; his da he could only ever remember as enormous, legs like tree trunks, hands the size of dinner plates, crashing through walls, swallowing whisky bottles.

"At least let me sit the hell down," Race snapped. This was starting to get uncomfortable; his knees hurt from kneeling

Spot paused and seemed to consider. "All right," he acquiesced after some thought.

There was a bit of shuffling as Racetrack shifted to unfold his legs from under him. Spot kept an arm clamped beneath Race's chin, but he let him arrange himself until he was sorted. Then Spot pushed his knees up along Racetrack's flanks and settled himself up against his back.

They didn't speak, Racetrack too breathless and furious to manage words and Spot still caught up in the unexpected bite of his own need. Seconds slid into minutes, into hours into days – which was ridiculous, impossible, thinking in those terms, counting in measures of time when all they ever really had to mark it was the number of breaths they took between one another. Spot's arm had dropped a bit in its angle, crossing more over Racetrack's chest now than his throat, but it was still an iron bar set across his shoulders, held in place by Race's fingers gripped around its wrist and its own fisted into the cloth of Racetrack's sleeve.

This was the opposite of progress, the opposite of doing, this full and perfect stillness. This was a false and unearned respite: neither ceasefire nor peace, just one, long, held note of music dragged to a standstill by the fear that one more step forward and they would come to an end of themselves.

"I still have your shirt, you know?" Spot said lowly. His temper had settled again, and that flattened out his voice into something cool, matter-of-fact. Race could have believed him untouchable, meeting him like this.

"Yeah?" he sneered. "You wear it out every once in a while? Give everyone a taste of how Roacher died?

Spot's entire body hesitated; there was no hiding it, not at this proximity. Then he said, slowly, "No," that smooth disinterest slipping into uncertainty, "I was thinking maybe you'd want it back.

Racetrack thought about that shirt and the splash of gore down one side from where arterial spray had caught it across the chest.

"I don't want it."

Spot nodded. "Okay," he said quietly.

He always went quiet after fighting, introspective as he never was in daily life, contemplative, like a kind of bloody soothsayer, able to divine some sort of truth out of pain and violence that no one else could see.

Race just tried not to think. The gash down his shoulderblade stung in sharp stabs every time he moved, but that was a specific pain, caused and counted. When it closed, given enough time, he wouldn't feel it anymore. That was all he needed to reflect upon.

But then Spot said, in a voice that sank Race's stomach when he heard it, "D'you remember that time we ended up in Jersey?" and that was so much for all his good intentions.

Of course Race remembered; Race remembered everything. The whole of his past and their entire history were the same thing, when he never cared to think back far enough to a memory when Spot wasn't there. He remembered the summer when Spot was thirteen and how he'd had to cough and limp to sell papes cos his voice kept cracking every time he yelled. He remembered the year when Spot turned ten, and Race had scrounged up a slingshot, and they spent a whole winter aiming at birds and flower pots before the elastic broke. He remembered when they met, when Spot was seven and tiny and how Race would take him selling with him, and Spot would follow him around on his heels, small hands pinched around broadsheets the size of his entire body.

"Here, Spot," he'd whistle and call and Spot would come trotting over to him, his face pale and round and serious.

"Stop it, Race, I'm not a puppy," he'd whine, and Race would slap his cap down over his eyes and nudge his knuckles over his hair, ruffling.

"Sure you ain't, kid," and Spot would pout and squirm and make himself neat again till Race told him, "Now you see those ladies over there? Go ask 'em to buy a pape, nice-like, like I showed you."

In the present, Racetrack just snorted, "We? You're the moron who pissed off the guys in the goddamn _Navy_. I just went with you cos you'd probably got yourself killed on your own." He left a space there, where Spot was supposed to laugh, pick up where Race had left off, and turn it around on him. He wasn't terribly surprised when Spot didn't.

Instead, in that same small, unguarded voice, he asked, "You ever been back?"

Racetrack sighed. He didn't like where this was going. "To Jersey?"

"Yeah."

Race fiddled with the cuff of Spot's sleeve. "Don't know if you remember, kid, but that wasn't exactly a picnic," he pointed out. "We hid in a barn for four days and then we came back because we'd nearly starved to death."

"Yeah, I know," Spot conceded. "But do you ever think about it?"

Racetrack thought about a lot of things: whether his shoes were going to hold up through the winter, whether he'd collected on that fifty cents the Jameson brothers still owed him in Queens. He thought about how the numbers were going to add up if he bet a nickel on the afternoon race, who he was gonna have to bum smokes off of if he smoked his last one before dinner. He thought about the state of the economy, the impact of heating oil on the housing market, the goddamn price of tea in China. Did he think about four freezing nights in a New Jersey hayloft?

"No," he said.

Spot's arm seemed unwittingly to drop till it looped just around the hollow of Racetrack's abdomen. Race slipped his arms out from under him. It moved them closer together, and Race could feel the tugs against his scalp in the places where Spot's hair brushed against his, the touch of breath from where Spot pushed against his neck, the flutter of eyelashes where Spot hid his face into the curve below Race's ear. He spoke so softly now, Race could hardly be sure he heard him.

"It's just, I remember at night," he said, "it got so dark you couldn't even see your hand in front of your face, but you could see everything up in the sky."

Race moved his hands in his lap. The base of his thumb briefly brushed against the back of Spot's hand. Spot flinched and Race regretted lying. "Yeah," he said instead, oddly voiceless.

"It's just I don't think I've seen that many stars."

Racetrack cleared his throat, hummed until there was only the faintest buzz in his voice. "It's too bright in the city," he told him roughly. "Blocks out the light."

But even as he spoke, the lights on the opposite shore were retreating, blinking out one by one as the night swallowed its people into sleep, and the horizon darkened and stars deferred behind the clouds until the moon shone alone, the only bright thing left up in the sky.

And it seemed like that was the end of it, the way Spot's breathing steadied out, the way his fingers relaxed against the palm of Racetrack's hand. Race thought for a moment that that was it, that he was in the clear, but then Spot spoke.

"Hey, Pat?"

"Yeah?"

Spot shifted his grip till he had unquestionably gathered all of Racetrack up into him. "If I didn't have Brooklyn, would you have gone with me to Jersey?"

Race felt as if all the air had been squeezed out of his lungs. "You don't get to ask me that," was what he would've said with that breath. "You lost the right to ask me that question when you asked me to spot you a switchblade. You gave up the claim to have that answered when you walked into that house with him knowing only one of you was coming out alive."

There was an honest, moral part of Racetrack that recoiled every time Spot touched him. It wanted to turn away his eyes every time Race saw his face, deafen his ears every time Race heard his voice. It wanted to punish him for every memory he dwelt on, every dream he dreamed, every hope he polished to a mirror shine. It was the part of him that told him to break from his past, to put away his guilt, to bury reluctance and forget. It was the part that told him to look only forwards and move on.

But that was not the part that loved Spot Conlon. That was not the part that snuck out of the craps game stacked with Roacher's boys that night. That was not the part that took back his switchblade from Spot's shaking hand.

That was not the part that he could forgive when it answered recklessly, "They got horses in Jersey?"

Spot startled. "Sure," he said. "Probably. They gotta gamble on something, don't they?"

Race paused as if to think, when all he only really did was close his eyes and try to forget all of what he'd never forgotten. "Yeah, sure, I guess," he said. "Why not?"

"Oh," Spot said. "Right."

* * *

They talked a little while longer, but eventually, Spot's head dropped forward and Race shifted in his hold so that it could fall to rest against his good shoulder. It wasn't the most comfortable position, and the summer evening was much too warm for such prolonged proximity, but Spot clung to him all through the night. Racetrack hardly slept at all, and when the sun came up eventually, he was the only one awake to watch it.

They were facing the wrong way for the sunrise, but it made itself known anyway, its fingers creeping warm and rosy through the dark. It cleared out the stars and swept away the moon. Soon enough, the city rose to greet it, rattling horse carts and clattering milkmen, low sounds of workers heading out for the factories, higher ones of peddlers hawking their wares. In another couple hours, the newspaper centers of New York would fire up their presses. Only shortly after that, the newsies would be out in full force.

He let Spot sleep, though it meant they'd both probably miss the morning edition. Spot slept like a top, like a baby, eyes shut tight but face lax and open. He was impossible to wake on the best of days, even more so before he was ready to get up. Race wondered absently who was going to watch Spot's back while he slept now. Probably whoever it was who'd been looking out for him since Racetrack left; one of his thugs, some paid boy bought for a nickel a week to make sure no one knifed him in his bed. Roacher always slept with one eye open. Maybe Spot would learn to do that. It wouldn't do for the new king of Brooklyn to go without a fight.

The sky lightened to pink, then blue, and then the distribution bells clanged, sounding discordant over the water. Spot stirred. He woke eventually in slow increments, life returning haltingly to slack limbs, like a dead man learning how to move again. His eyes blinked apart and then immediately shut. Groaning, he cringed and rubbed his face into Race's shoulder. "What time is it?" he grunted, face still hidden.

Racetrack craned his neck to peer back at him. "It look to you like I have a watch?" he drawled. His voice sounded rough and strained, but he hadn't been kind to it last night.

Spot rolled his eyes and peeled himself off Race's back. Their clothes had stuck together where Racetrack's blood had dried between them. "Just mean, I thought I heard the bells," he said. He picked carefully at the back of Race's bloody shirt. The line of blood had clotted shut.

Race didn't look back at him to see what he was doing. "That was ten minutes ago," he told him, then added sardonically, "Surprised you even noticed it at all, the way you was drooling all over me."

"I don't drool," Spot said quickly. He wiped surreptitiously at his mouth.

Race snorted. "Yeah you do. You should see your face, when you sleep. Every night, you're all like _hnngahghh_." He made a suitable face for the noise.

Spot pushed him. "Shut up," he said, but there was a bubble of humor trapped in his voice. He pulled his knees beneath him and straightened up, joints crackling with disuse.

Race gave Spot his hand when he offered to pull him up. His legs were stiff from sitting, and he felt older than he was when it took him a moment to stand up from his hunch. "Every night, kid," he repeated. He gave Spot a pointed glance.

Spot crossed his arms and scowled. "At least I don't snore," he retorted.

"Course you don't," Racetrack assured him. He tested his shoulder – rigid and stinging – and patted gingerly at his clothes, shaking out the dust. "Snoring's how a man sleeps. Come talk to me when you've got more than two hairs poking out of your chin to shave in the morning. Then you'll know."

Spot stifled a smirk in order to afford him a haughty, knowing look. "You don't even shave, Race."

"Yeah, you're right," Race agreed solemnly. "I don't."

They stared at each other for a moment stuck in time like a Mexican standoff. Then a snicker broke through Racetrack's front, but he counted it still as a victory that Spot laughed first, shoulders crumpling like a wad of dry paper, shaking silently till he looked up and saw Race doing the same thing, and then they were howling.

"That ain't even that funny," Spot said, wheezing out lungfuls of air faster than he was breathing them in.

"Your mother ain't even that funny," Racetrack returned, clutching his stitching flank.

Spot choked, reaching out for Race for balance. "My mother's dead," he pointed out.

Racetrack took him by the wrist and kept him upright. "Yeah, I know," he gasped.

They ended up on the floor anyway, staring at the ceiling, sides pressed, knee to shoulder, Spot's arm wedged crookedly underneath Race's head. Every couple of seconds, one of them would let out a squeezed noise and get kicked in the ankle or rapped across the chest. A square of pale sunlight from the window intensified as the sun broke out from behind the clouds, and as the minutes passed, drifted along the floor till it tangled golden into Spot's hair.

When Spot finally turned to face him, the one of his eyes was lit more brightly than the other. He told Race in careful words, "I can protect you if you stay, but if you leave, you know how it's gonna look."

Racetrack snorted and looked away, then sighed. "I don't know, Spot, how's it gonna look?" He untangled himself from Spot's limbs and sat up.

Spot followed him. There was something incredulous in his expression when he tried to catch Race's eye. "You brought the bulls on us, Race."

"I didn't."

"Well, that ain't how it looks is it?" Spot combed his hair back from his face in a gesture of frustration. He told him emphatically, "You know if you leave again, you ain't comin' back."

Racetrack swallowed and gathered himself again for another uncountable time. "Yeah, I know."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

Spot studied him, pale eyes flat and motionless, and Racetrack stared back, unfeeling, unafraid, but then Spot moved forward, before Race could react, and slung his arms around him.

"Bastard," he said, and Racetrack couldn't be sure if he imagined it, but Spot's arms seemed to tighten around him in that breathing, open moment, and then when he let go, Race felt every last important thing to him fall away.

A voice called for Spot, then, young and nervous, and as Spot squeezed himself out the window and climbed down the brickwork to the street below, it struck Race that maybe, this was what they meant when they talked about being free. This is what it meant to be beholden to no one, to have no one beholden to you, to have nothing to believe in outside of yourself and to have no one believe anything of you. He was his own man, to do with himself as he pleased, chained no more to duty or care.

And as the morning lit up the sluggish waters of the grey East River, he wondered, in the end, just how great that was all supposed to feel anyway.

* * *

Hey kids! Thanks for playing! The winner this round goes to for 40 views and 250 words in comments! Continuing in this shameless line of pimpage, SAME RULES AS LAST TIME FOLKS!

Next (last) chapter once we reach:

a) 100 views (total, including from last chapter, because I have my validation issues, but I'm also writing for a fandom old enough to legally drink in the continental USA)  
b) 300 words in comments (I BELIEVE IN YOU)  
c) 1 month (so August 4th)

ETA: last chapter's up, go get 'em fellas


	3. Spot, Jack, Racetrack

notey notes notes notes:

aww yeaaaah kids are you ready for more of these motherfuckin politics?, protip number 3: you can read this as social commentary but this actually works really well as a direct analogy to the differences between public/private BT trackers, canon anachronisms included but i'd like to express my stiff-lipped reluctance in doing so, pre-canon Jack is a parochial self-absorbed bully, one of canon's primary points in developing his character is ridding him of this, this chapter is about giving up the things you love for the things you want

* * *

**Chapter 3: Spot, Jack, Racetrack  
**

The traffic over Brooklyn Bridge stank: horses, mules, people, all plodding across the river of shit that flowed underneath it. This was two too many times a lifetime now that Jack had had to be on this side of it, but he had unfinished business with Brooklyn still: he'd had to cut and run to save Jimmy McNulty's neck last night. But now the Bronx owed him, and Jimmy couldn't look him in the eye, so it hadn't all been a complete wash, at least.

Jack leaned carelessly against the railing, papers tucked under one arm. He wasn't really selling; no one crossing the bridge ever had the inclination to stop, even for a pape. Here was the one true no-man's land in all of New York, on this span of metal and masonry that separated them from Brooklyn City.

Some of Spot's boys eyed him from across the carriageway, slumped into their own papers, not really selling. Jack nodded his chin at them and grinned, a slow spread of teeth. They scowled back but avoided his eyes. Their man was late, and they were wasting precious peak hours keeping an eye on Jack Kelly. It said something wonderful about the marvel of Brooklyn discipline that not a single one of them had wandered off.

Jack hummed a saucy Vaudeville ditty to himself, smiled and dipped his head at a group of factory workers trudging past. "Buy a pape, mister?" he asked, mostly on the habit of doing so. They shouldered past him wordlessly, eyes never leaving the pavement. They were powerhouses of the eastern seaboard, these men and boys, the essence of what made this country great, and not one of them was ever going to make it off the factory floor.

Finally, in the distance, upstream along the river road, a lone figure approached. Jack squinted a bit in the glare of the morning to be sure, but he recognized that avicular strut anywhere. The boys across the street did too; one of them let out a groan of relief so loud that Jack could hear it even from where he stood. Jack lifted his hat and waved.

"There you are," he called, as Spot made his way up onto the walkway. They did the perfunctory greetings, though with, perhaps, less gusto than a grandstanding ought to start off with. "Kept me waiting thirty minutes, you did," Jack told him noisily. "I'll have you know that Roacher never kept a guy waiting, especially so close to home. If you're gonna be running things from now on, you oughta –" He stopped when he took in Spot's condition. His eyebrows rose. "You got blood on your shirt."

Spot's pale, unfocussed gaze drifted down to where Jack was pointing to the front of his left shoulder. He looked back up and blinked with feline unconcern. "It's not mine," he answered. One of his boys crossed over the street and handed him his hat and cane. Spot took them without breaking eye contact with Jack, and then jerked his head aside. So summarily dismissed, the boy and his pals dispersed. Spot stuck the cane into his belt and swept his hair up into his cap. He told Jack unapologetically, "I had business to look into."

"Yeah?" Jack grinned, all teeth now. "And how's business doing?"

Spot afforded him an imperious look. "What do you care?"

Jack shrugged. "Oh, I dunno," he said casually. "Just one guy lookin' out for another guy who's about to cross the floor, I guess."

Spot's look would've frozen hellfire. "He wouldn't join your little band of shit-for-brains if you were the last morons alive on earth," he snarled, some of that untouchable cool finally giving out under temper.

"Really?" Jack asked, drawing out his vowels into whines. He leaned his elbows back onto the railing over the river for the full effect of looking down his nose. "He stayin' with you?"

There was a brief and reckless moment where it occurred to Jack that Spot might just shove him, their deal and his promises and his own self-interest be damned, just because he was a touchy, over-reactionary asshole like that. Jack idly considered the prospect of drowning to death in the East River; he never could swim all that good, though maybe he wouldn't even make it out of the water; maybe the fall would take him out. The last time he'd saw his mother, after all, she'd had a crushed skull that looked like she'd took a nosedive off the top of the Pulitzer Building, not Aqueduct Bridge.

Spot glared at him, anger and self-preservation tying down his tongue. If Spot could've held the border at the bridge on his own at that point, he would never have even had to learn this boy's name: Jack Kelly was too clever by half and too smug by several more times; they would've never been friends, even if he hadn't been a smart-mouthed, yellow-bellied slickster from the wrong side of the bridge. But he couldn't, not so early yet when loyalties still faltered and doubts still circled and Roacher's boys still roamed the streets unchallenged. He had no need for friends right now, but he did need Jack Kelly.

"You just make sure you keep your promises, Jacky-boy," Spot said lowly, pitching his voice to a threatening register just below the rumble of the streets. "That's all I need from you."

Jack smiled and tipped his head in a sardonic bow. "As your Kingliness commands."

Spot scowled and rubbed his thumb over the brass Edwardian claw at the end of his cane. It bumped against the ground when he walked with it stuck in his suspenders like this, meant for someone older and taller than a boy half-grown like him. But to the victor went the spoils, and Spot wasn't about to give up the only thing Brooklyn recognized as an object of power just cos it didn't quite fit his leg stride.

"Roacher had the right idea, paying you off, Kelly," he intoned. "You're more trouble than you're worth."

"Oh, but _Spot_," Jack sang, lolling about on his feet like his joints were made of taffy. "Your friendship is worth so much more to me than a lousy buck-fifty at the end of the week."

"Yeah? That's funny," Spot snapped. "Didn't think the boys from _The Journal_ took payment in _friendship_. What're you gonna do to keep 'em off my back, Kelly? I sure as hell don't need no carpetbagging punks trying to set up their own little fiefdoms when my back is turned just cos you couldn't keep up your end of the deal."

"I give 'em enough business on my side of the bridge," Jack said evenly. All his cocksure condescension thawed away, and suddenly, there was Jack, fair-minded, temperate Jack, best businessman in all of Lower Manhattan. He tipped his head curiously. "Why dy'a think I only got two hundred boys in my house?" he asked. "That's how many I can take care of, and that way, there's more than enough punters out there for all of 'em. Not everything's gotta be either a payoff or a soakin', Spot."

Spot bared his teeth and thought about his two thousand boys, every one of them whose lives and livelihoods were tied to his. He knew this wasn't how Queens ran their business, or the Bronx, and certainly not Manhattan – they had no leaders in their neighborhoods, no organization. In Brooklyn, everything was ordered. If one guy fell behind, didn't have a place to sleep, couldn't get enough to eat, it was his neighborhood's job to get him seen to. It was Spot's job to make sure that none of the neighborhoods were hanging anyone out to dry. It was everyone else's to let him lead, to let him decide who among them wasn't pulling his weight and how he should pay. Those were their rules.

Roacher had been slack on their enforcement, the last couple years of his tenure, and newsies from other cities had snuck across their borders, sold papes in territories that didn't have the punters for it, fled back home before they could be made to pay their fees. Neighborhood leaders got lazy, complacent, and the last winter, fifteen kids'd frozen on the streets because Roacher didn't cover for them; too busy selling out, lining his own pockets. New York didn't have that problem, because New York never knew how many guys didn't make it through a snowdrift. They had no one to care.

"That's not how we do things here," Spot replied evenly with only a modicum of disdain.

Jack rolled his shoulders. "Changes are coming, Spotty," he said matter-of-factly. "Your friend Racetrack's got the right idea. Diversifying. Brooklyn ain't gonna be a city much longer, you know."

Spot's expression was bored. "I'll deal with that when it comes."

"It's comin' sooner than you think," Jack told him bluntly. You didn't have to read the papers to know that consolidation was happening; the vote'd gone through years ago, and it was just a matter of time before referendum took effect. "How you gonna keep your boys in line then, when we're all gonna be part of the great City of New York?" he challenged. "How you gonna keep your end of the deal?"

Spot's was a cold little face stoically holding out, showing no weakness, missing the point. "I don't go back on my word," he said. "Unlike some guys."

Jack spread his hands disbelievingly. "Jimmy McNulty was gonna get through, no matter what you or me or both of us did about it," he said. "You know that. A guy like Jimmy's gonna get anywhere he likes."

Spot cracked his cane against the stones. To the side, a horse startled. "Then what good are you to me?" he savaged.

Jack lifted his eyebrows. "You think Jimmy or Jeff or any of the rest of them are gonna have business with you on the day to day?" he asked. "Hate to break it to you, Spot, but you ain't that special."

Spot glowered at him, but said nothing. Jack rolled his eyes. "Oh, don't you worry your pretty little head about my side of the bridge," he assured sneeringly. "I got things covered. But just remember –" he prodded a finger in Spot's direction "–you owe me now. I say I want Brooklyn's support on something, I don't want no bullshit from you. I call for you, you better come running."

Spot crossed his arms, gaze narrowing. "What the hell are you even gonna do?"

Jack shifted on his feet. "Like I said," he offered half-heartedly, "change is coming. You know there's gonna be a war soon?"

"Yeah, Jack," Spot bit out caustically. "Maybe over in Manhattan, being able to read's a big deal, but here we just call it examining the goods."

Jack shrugged. "War changes things."

"For newsboys?" Spot asked scathingly. "In New York?"

Jack made a vaguely patronizing gesture with the tilt of his head. "You gotta learn to think a little bigger, Spot. Especially if you're gonna be running a city – sorry, a _borough_ – now."

Spot glared. Then he asked, hostility dripping from his voice, "You done?"

"Sure thing, Spot." Jack lifted his hand and waved it in front of his face in a flippant salute. Spot's lip curled nastily. Cowboy Jack would get his, one day. Spot wasn't the plotting sort; he didn't have the patience for it, but he could see it done.

The morning rush was ending, the sun approaching its zenith overhead. Heat bore down on them, stirred up the stink from the river below. Their business done, Jack lazed around for a couple minutes more, but only to show Spot he wasn't going to allow himself to be dismissed. Spot stayed and watched him, unwilling to be the first to turn his back. Grandstanding was a complicated process, full of unnecessary gestures and immovable pride.

Eventually, Jack stood from his sloppy slump against the railings and gathered himself together with immense amount of nonchalance. He stood there, straightening his papers for a moment longer while Spot counted the seconds, fantasizing on the sounds his cane might make coming down on Jack Kelly's smug, ugly mouth. But then Jack smiled touched his cap with a reasonable amount of civility, and swiveled on his toes to head back to Manhattan. Spot released the breath of anger he'd been holding, relaxed his shoulders. He had other things to do with his day than do the box-step with Cowboy Jack.

Jack wasn't more than ten feet from where he'd started out when he doubled back, long legs eating up the distance, that look back on his face. "Oh yeah, one more thing."

Spot grit his teeth and bristled. "What?"

Jack flashed his shit-eating grin. "I'd consider it a real personal favor if you'd let my new buddy Racetrack back in Sheepshead."

Spot held back the shot of fury that surged when Jack Kelly rolled his tongue around Race's name like that, and simply hissed, "What the hell does it matter to you?"

"Like I said," Jack simpered, his chin up in an insouciant angle, "personal favor. Besides," he added, leering like he was relishing some sort of secret, "he's one of mine now. I gotta make sure I'm takin' good care of him, right?"

"You piece of –" Violence flared behind Spot's eyes, crawled black over his vision. He had his switchblade tucked into the top of his boot; one flick of that, and then Jack Kelly would smile, oh he'd be smiling for good, ear to goddamn _ear_–

"Think of it this way," Jack said quickly, perhaps sensing that he'd pushed one step too far. "He'll be sleeping in Manhattan but he'll be back every day in Brooklyn to sell." Spot paused, and Jack, encouraged, continued smoothly, "Who knows? You might even see him around."

Spot didn't have the luxury of thinking it through, not with Kelly studying him sidelong like some curiosity under a magnifier. He didn't have time to consider the pros and cons, to weigh out what it might mean for his boys to see Racetrack around after he'd turned turncoat on them, what it might mean for him to have allowed it. All he could do is judge the suggestion for the solution Kelly offered: did he want Racetrack back in Brooklyn again?

"Fine," Spot said, and immediately cursed the obvious relief that sailed through his voice. He scowled harder to make up for it; maybe Jack Kelly hadn't noticed, couldn't call on this as another thing Spot owed him. Jack just grinned his frozen rictus grin. Spot glared back. "Anything else you want?" he snapped. "Can I get you a drink? A cushion for your fat pompous ass –?"

"No, no, no, Spot," Jack chastised primly, and Spot would've wanted to sock him now, if he hadn't already wanted to since their conversation began, "you gotta try to be friendlier. Me and you," he gestured between them, "we're buddies now. Neighbors, you know."

Spot took a deliberate step into Jack's space, crowding him, tilting back his face till they were nose to nose. Then he told him in his hardest, most dangerous voice, "How about you get your own goddamn house in order first, and then you tell me how to run my town, _neighbor_?"

Jack just rolled his eyes and batted beneath his nose like he'd smelt something offensive. He didn't step back. "See, that's the difference between you and me, Spot," he drawled. "I don't gotta get nothin' in order. They listen to me cos they want to, over there, not cos I make 'em."

Spot showed his teeth. "You and your two hundred lousy boys –"

Jack ducked his head to the side, over Spot's. "Don't look now, but I think that's Racetrack," he quipped. Jack waved. Spot spun on his heel. "Hiya, Race."

He stepped around Spot and circled nimbly to where Racetrack'd stopped, just at the foot of the walkway. Race's hair was damp and roughly combed; his clothes hung crooked and limp from his frame. Jack glanced at the brown stain of blood that spread along the back of his left shoulder, the tear in his shirt that stretched underneath his vest, then looked back at the matching stain on Spot's.

Racetrack frowned. "Jack," he said, surprise obvious in the purse of his mouth. "What're you doing here?"

Jack threw a glance sidelong to Spot, who was still stuck in place, that look of blank intensity frozen in his eyes. Then he smiled.

"Dropped by just to make sure everything was all right after shit went down yesterday," he said easily. "You left me in a bit of a lurch there, Race. Wasn't sure what became of ya."

Race shook his head and answered, but his eyes kept drifting everywhere but where he should've been looking. "Yeah, sorry about that," he said tiredly. "Things got, you know," he gestured, "complicated."

"Yeah?" Jack asked sunnily. "They still complicated?" He clapped the back of Race's neck, then stole a glance to see what sort of emotion passed into Spot's eyes.

"No," Race said, shrugging, and he didn't pull away. "No, they're pretty cut and dry now."

"That's good," Jack assured him. "That's good to hear. Hey," he said cheerfully, "you know, if we head back now, you can still catch the morning edition, make up for yesterday."

Racetrack returned his smile heavily. "Yeah?"

Jack grinned. "Sure thing." He pushed his papers into Racetrack's hands and nudged him along. "You go on though," he said. "I'll catch up."

Racetrack threw him a cautious look, over his shoulder, but he nodded, stuck his hands in his pockets, and trudged forwards.

Spot's eyes flickered back to Jack. Jack was surveying him watchfully, intent shrouded behind an expression of effortless good humor. "You didn't tell him," Spot accused, though he had no ground to stand on; he hadn't said anything either.

"No," Jack agreed lazily. "I think I'll save it for now. Let him settle in a bit. 'Sides," he added with a pernicious lilt, "he's good company."

Spot's knuckles gripped the head of his cane and went white. "Go put it up your ass, Kelly." Some unnamable emotion shuttered over his face before shuddering into stone.

Jack watched him a moment longer. Spot was everything you'd expect in a fourteen year old boy; Jack knew, because it hadn't been that long since he was that age himself. He had no courage that wasn't really just dressed-up recklessness, and he had no wisdom that he hadn't borrowed from somewhere else. There was a stubborn streak of immortality in him still, left over from childhood, tempered with an academic knowledge that death waited for no one's permission to snatch you up, but not the actual thing. He needed to care, but he didn't know how; he tried to own, but he'd never had anything. Most tellingly, he always wanted to go a step further than was good for him, just to prove that he would. Spot Conlon wasn't a man. He didn't have that burden in him.

Almost gently, Jack tried to tell him, "You gotta grow up." He met Spot's furious gaze and held it. Spot kept up for a moment, but when Jack's sincerity held under challenge, he ducked away, discomfited. Jack caught his eye again. This was beyond sniping and petty baiting. This was something Spot needed to know. "You got what you wanted, so now you gotta keep your eye on it, or else someone else'll take it from you," he continued lowly. "You gotta decide what's important."

A sour look passed over Spot's face, and at first it looked as if he'd just spit back something nasty again. But then his expression twisted and he murmured, "'When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child.'"

Jack blinked at him, disconcerted. "What the hell is that, poetry?"

"No," Spot answered steadily, holding eye-contact with a burning look. "It's the Bible."

Jack blew out a perturbed lungful of air. "Didn't take you to be the god-fearing type, Spot," he said, mildly astonished.

"I'm not."

Their eyes turned down the street to follow Racetrack as he shuffled across the bridge, though in truth, it was Spot's eyes that watched him, and it was Jack's eyes that watched Spot.

Jack had no love for this boy, and none, really, for Racetrack. In Spot, he had an ally, sharp-sighted, quick-minded, efficiently brutal, bought by debt and unclouded by sentiment. And Racetrack, well, he liked Racetrack. Everyone liked Racetrack, even the guys who didn't; he was good people. That, too, was power invaluable, put to the right use. They were parts of a bigger thing, and Jack found it – in the very least – refreshing, how clearly they both knew it.

But power wasn't just a proof of itself, wasn't just the things you could get with it, the things you could control, the people you could have it over. Power was other things too: things you could do, things you could change. Things you could give, that weren't in the reach of others to take.

If he let it, it would let him be kind.

"Hey," he decided. Calling, louder, "Hey, Race!"

Spot watched as Jack Kelly jogged down the bridge, watched Racetrack turn his head, and then his body, and shoved down for the second time in as many hours that vast and gaping feeling of unreciprocated loss; of prices paid, of futures made, of choices and debts and the fundamental differences in life that separated people. Shoved it all down so deep, it rooted in his feet, rooted him standing, fixed, on one end of that common bridge, one edge of his changing city, where he could see Racetrack as Jack joined up with him – the reflexive softening of his face as Jack caught him around the shoulders, the quiet humor in his smile.

Jack leaned down to say something into the space between their faces and then grinned, that wide, white, Jacky-boy grin. Racetrack stared up at him, and then Jack lifted his head, nodded his chin, once, in Spot's direction, and clapped Race on back. He laughed when Race flinched, and waved his hands in placating flourishes when Race clutched at his shoulder and chewed him out. Then Jack touched him again, more carefully this time, a light tap on the arm, and walked on ahead.

Racetrack stood in place, watching Jack go, for a moment, his body half-turned. He moved away, but then he stopped, seemed to hesitate. And in that moment, Spot didn't know what to do with himself, what he could do, what sort of price he'd have to pay to pride to just do what he wanted, to call out, to run, to be the one to catch Race around the shoulders, to be the one to draw that softness, that quiet smile, from his face.

Spot knew Racetrack Higgins was nothing, nobody, unremarkable; just some Black Irish bastard, fatherless, motherless, one of a million, dodgy and dingy and destined for a life of common destitution. He was short and he was sickly and he wasn't even very good at anything, not even gambling, despite what he liked to pass himself off as. He'd done nothing in his life; would, in all likelihood, do nothing. He'd go to bed and rise for some fifty-odd years and go into the ground without a single noteworthy deed to his name.

But in that moment, when he turned around, then, with his bruise-ringed eyes, his sloped spine, his pale and watery smile, when he looked Spot in the eye and nodded – in that moment, he was everything.

Spot stayed there a little while longer, even after Race loped away and disappeared into the masses, and let the merchants, the mule carts, the horse-drawn carriages pass him by. Let the sun beat down on him, let the dust of the city drift into his face, speckle his eyes. Stayed there for a while longer, looking out across the water, where he could peer into the teeming colossus of New York, where he could know with all confidence he had all of Brooklyn City behind him.

- end

* * *

You guys are fab! Thanks for staying with me! Can't ransom for comments any more, but any feedback remains religiously appreciated, as always.

If anyone's interested, I'm linking my notes/research dump for anyone who's interested in that sort of thing. Think of it as a DVD extra.

archiveofourown(DOT org)/works/860132/chapters/1647815

Change out the (DOT org) for . org, you know how it goes.


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